


every second, dripping off my fingertips

by VesperRegina



Category: Galileo (TV Japan)
Genre: 30kisses, Bloodplay, F/M, Happy Ending, Self-Harm, Sexual Content, Suicidal Thoughts, Writing on the Body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-04 00:28:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4119967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VesperRegina/pseuds/VesperRegina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Violence; pillage/plunder; extortion.  Three points along a timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every second, dripping off my fingertips

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to Eireann. If this story is at all coherent, it's because of her very valuable suggestions and beta-reading skills. Also, all my love to Ahria for her support. Fill for prompt #21 on the 30Kisses table, same as the summary.

Go, she tells him, leave me alone; I can cook by myself. So he leaves her and she tries, tries to do what she said she'll do.

There's ice in the freezer: ice will melt on her skin, and burn as she slides it, following the lines of blue beneath her skin, drip, drip, dripping off, not red. She wants to see red.

Ice will burn, but it won't take the failure out of her skin, won't excise the bitter fire that smolders at the edges of her soul, sends smoke and sparks, tiny holes that grow into dark-edged destruction, because no matter what she does there will never be relief from herself and all she'll never be able to do.

Not even Yukawa's words are trustworthy enough. It was her responsibility, her decisions, her lack of timing. Her job to protect someone and she failed at it.

The knife would be better than ice. At least then she'd see red, and not need to imagine the drops of water turning crimson.

You could end it. The words creep in the corners of her skull, skulking. Yukawa wouldn't care; do it right and you'd bleed out before he'd notice you're being too quiet. He always did want you to be quiet.

If she looks closely, the idea is written in the edge of the knife, in the holes of the barrel of her gun, in the circle of the bottle of pain reliever. It's everywhere she looks. A sign pulled out of her very breath. Step off the edge. Just go where no one will follow you. It's the least you could do.

She could get the ice, let it burn, but the knife would let her bleed the thoughts out, every gleaming drop of her blood cooling the fire.

The knife is a sharp, unserrated, thin blade that bends as she pushes it through the white peeled chunk of radish, pieced apart into regularity. The edge of the knife hits the cutting board with dull thunks, in futility of motion, the sounds of her staying.

Her eyes fill with tears, inexcusable by her task, but she's quiet, keeps up the motion, the sign of life. The blade cuts and cuts, and she sees the box of white-covered utility blades at the back of a drawer in her bathroom. She tastes salt slipping warmth into a corner of her mouth, down the back of her throat. She made a promise; she shouldn't break it.

The paper rustles when she takes those blades out, waxed inside shining, protecting the edge that is much sharper than it appears, so thin that the sting is like a paper-cut, until she pushes.

There is no more radish to cut. She stands at the sink, knife in slack fingers, eyes unfocused. The shine of it blurs, swims, refocuses. She needs to rinse it off, move on to the next step, but she hesitates, drowning in possibility.

She made a promise, but it's not enough. She's already made the decision.

She sighs when she makes the cut, feels the pain transfer from her, transform in the making from agony to release. The drops well up into the split, and she stands mesmerized, her mind quiet, focused.

Yukawa's approach teases at her awareness, not with panic, not with guilt, nothing underneath but a dead frozen calm, and when she meets the eyes she knows are caught in watching the slow thick splatter of small red drops, dissipating in feathered wisps into the water remaining in the sink, she feels nothing.

She says nothing but the truth, and watches harrowing understanding build a city in the drawn muscles of his face. The coldness around her feels warm, a cocoon of apathy and false control. The voices of death have stopped clamoring, and the quiet is a relief. She did what she had to.

He runs the tap over her hand, over the thin wound at the base of her palm, but it's deep enough to keep bleeding. She can see the clench of his jaw, even though he's not meeting her eyes. Just once, she tries, and once is enough, met with a flinch and anger and a tense control that only she would be able to pluck at until it snapped. Regardless, or with too much regard -- she can't tell, doesn't want to discover -- he holds her hand in his, and she's bleeding on him. Too deep. She cut too deep; it will stain the towel he's wrapping around her hand, as he guides her to a seat at their table, gentle and far too patient. His silence is damning, but it's nothing she hasn't hung herself underneath before.

His movements are precise, measured, as he places a pad of white over her cut -- the make of it ensures it won't stick -- and she was wrong. It won't need stitches, won't need anything but careful monitoring and a wrap around it, and it's all a cover-up for something stupid and useless, but Yukawa keeps working at a steady pace, hands and fingers putting her carefully back together when she shouldn't be treated with this patience. She tries to take her hand back but he doesn't allow her -- holds fast to her. She desists. Under his fingertips, the bandage gleams like a bright summer day, white and strong, hiding the stain underneath.

She licks her lips; she's parched, her mouth too dry to allow for her to swallow, but she tries anyway, trying to find a collection of syllables that would enable her to apologize, but she finds nothing but offence to be her ally. "Being quiet about this isn't what I expected from you."

He turns his head away, but his profile isn't hidden enough and the twist of his lips is full of emotion, more than he can contain. It is, however, quickly stifled and brought under subjugation. He removes his hand from hers. Slight pressure gone, missed only in absence. It is worse than the look on his face... nothing binds them, if they are not touching.

"Recriminations won't be enough to stop you from doing this." His gaze is a blinding light and she wants to hide from it, this understanding he has of her. "I want to know how you could think this was a solution."

"You know this is my control. Don't take it from me. At least -- at least -- not right now."

"I'm not taking it from you. You promised to tell me when you needed this."

The reminder forces her into silence; it falls between them, an almost physical weight of unsaid words filling up the passing seconds like snow, slow and merciless. The cut on the mound of her palm will take time to heal, more deep than the others, less strategic, and it was a mistake -- another, on top of another, but she can't feel the pain of it anymore, just the pressure of the bandage, and the flutter of her blood pulsing underneath.

The tightness around his eyes is still there, a look as if he's waiting to be struck, as if it wouldn't be a wonder, the tension worse because she'd never do that, but there are worse ways to hurt a person and she's found the one she knows he can't withstand. He gets to his feet, a fluid motion, out of her space, and she can only watch the widening distance. His face above her is sad, not angry.

"This hurts you; I know it does. I wish you didn't have to deal with me."

"You think you're damaged."

"Not in the ways everyone wants me to be. Yukawa, I can't care, there's nothing inside to -- nothing. I wish this wasn't the only thing that helps me --"

Yukawa's voice seems far away. "The only thing?"

"I don't want -- I stop wanting. Yukawa." She touches the bandage, but she doesn't look away from his face, and the devastation there -- that is her work, her responsibility, everything she's ever loved in ruins. Nothing for it.

"You would have had to explain this."

"I know."

"You were being foolish."

"I know."

"Give me your hand." He sits down as he takes it, palm to palm, fingers extended and touching her wrist. The tenderness of it stops her breath, flutters inside her with anticipation. She shouldn't twist his comfort into this... terrible yearning, but it's there, a discoloration over something that was once pure.

He says, "This only works when you trust me. This only works for me if you stop acting as if you are alone."

"I'll stop. I promise."

"I never said I don't believe you and this," he presses his thumb into her cut, hard, and she hisses, "doesn't have to be your control."

Her cut throbs; it's exactly what she wanted. "Do it again."

For a moment, the indecision is plain on his face, the way he opens his mouth just a little, enough to make her hold her breath, enough to start a slow burn in her.

"You would like that."

"Please."

He closes his eyes. She leans forward.

"Not right now," he answers, and opens his eyes, his thumb now moving over the spot he'd pressed, gentle back and forth. "That's what you want, not what you need."

His hand closes on her wrist before she can jerk it away. He reads her well, the flare of her anger visible before she even registers it clawing up from underneath the muffling layers which she lies to herself are enough to keep her safe from it. Still, she only fights for a moment, because his voice cuts through all her rage.

"Tell me to let go."

She quits her struggle, but his grasp is still tight around her wrist. His face is set in reluctant stone, determined hardness, waiting for the command to be at ease. She doesn't want to see it; she can't help but respond to it, her body signalling emotions before she can feel them herself: a tightness in her chest, a clump in her throat, heat in the corners of her eyes. She won't cry; she can't do that, not when she's tied fast again. This is all her choice.

He waits and waits, and she gathers the strength she needs, or maybe relinquishes, because there is nothing left again, but it's the clean stillness of a storm passed. "Let go," she says, and he does.

"Sit," he says. "I'll finish supper."

She does for a little while, her head on the table, fingers touching her bandage, but when her eyes start to drift shut and stay that way, she moves herself to their couch, where she curls up and listens, mindlessly, to him work, moving around, clatters and clinks and thumps fading into white noise.

She almost thinks it's a dream when she feels his fingers slide into her hair. "Wake up; come and eat," he says, and then his touch is gone again.

* * *

Through the soft barrier of the blue nitrile gloves Yukawa wears, Utsumi's skin is sunlight and firewarmth. Her breath stutters and catches behind her teeth as he caresses her skin, tracing the translucent blue of veins, the skin a fragile container of her blood, absorbing light and returning an illusion of color. He moves up, skating his thumbs past the outline of her pubic hair, his fingers past her navel, up to rub over the curve of her breasts. Her eyes move behind her eyelids, her eyelashes dark and beautiful curves against her skin. Her hands twist and grasp at nothing, then at the dark red sheet beneath her, setting her off like a golden band in a jeweler's case. On his knees like this, with her at the edge of the bed, she makes herself open for him.

He moves up beside her, and it is so quiet around them that he notes the scrape of his clothed body against the fabric of the sheets when otherwise he wouldn't. It's a pleasant sound, but he sets it aside, focuses on Utsumi. He circles one pointed nipple, around and around the areola, the puckers and bumps there firm under his fingertip, and she arches into his touch, opens her mouth like she's dying of thirst. He reaches down, down again, with his other hand, between her legs, and two fingers slide with ease into her, past the folds there, her core hotter still than her skin. She responds to his touch with abandon, with noises that are far gone, past caring what she sounds like, and it makes him conscious that even though this is all with her permission, even though they planned it out, step by step, that she has placed herself in his hands, become vulnerable, ceding to him in a way that shows her utter trust.

He puts his mouth close to her nipple, blows a soft breath against it, gratified when she shivers. He covers it with his mouth, rolls the nub with his tongue, then bites, hard, before letting go and blowing on it again. Her hips rise from the bed, and the noise she makes at the back of her throat, uncontrolled, resounds in his ears, pulls at the center of him, aching and hot. He disregards the sensation, focuses his gaze on Utsumi. Her breath comes from her in a rush, then is drawn back in, a wave going in and out, and her cunt tightens around his fingers. Her response is eager, wanton, unguarded, and the sight of her quickens his pulse. He takes his hand from her and lifts it to her mouth. "Taste yourself," he commands. She opens her eyes, focuses on him, unblinking, and latches on, covering the nitrile rubber with her mouth, pulls him in, cheeks hollowing, then swirls her tongue around. His heart pounds in his ears. She pulls her mouth off his fingers with a wet pop, and his cock answers the implication there with a throb.

She reaches for him, hand going down to feel him, slyness in the twist of her lip, and the slide of her eyes to the side. He thwarts her intention before she can even touch the fabric of his pants, entwining his fingers with hers, forcing her hand away and then bringing it over between them.

"Are you changing your plan?" he asks.

Her fingers stop moving, and she looks away. "No."

"There will be other times," he says, voice calm. He lets her hand go and moves down. Her hands go to his head, and comb through his hair, sending prickles of heat down his spine, sparks that burst, soft and gentle. He kisses down her body, not-so-random points: under her left breast, a freckle; the last rib on both sides, her navel, the tiny raised chicken pox scar on her right hip. She lifts herself to him, his intentions made clear. He pushes the hair away from her clit, smells salt, the sea at its wildest, and fastens his mouth to her.

She gasps and bucks, but opens her legs wide, and he catches her under one of them, his hand pushing her on the underside of her knee, thumb in the soft underside, while his other hand covers her hip. Her bone is a peak in that palm, the valley of her legs around him, opening wide. She keens low in her throat, and lets go of his hair. He listens to her thrash above him, until her hands find purchase in the sheets again, the sound of her nails scraping them loud, crumpling wrinkles into them. She pushes herself at him, erratic and unrestrained, and it spurs him on, fills him with pride, that he has done this, reduced her to visceral reaction, as he dips his tongue into her and sucks the taste of her down, lost in the darkness of his closed eyes and her response, breaking and being reformed. Her form moves to his bidding, and she gasps, harsh sobs. He strokes against her clit with the flat of his tongue, over and over again. He makes her die and live.

She comes in perfect silence, breath stopped, body trembling, tense, against his mouth, against his hands. He opens his eyes and eases her back down to the bed, feeling the moment her crest washes out of her, her breath a long low sigh. Her nipples have softened, her chest rises and falls, but her eyes are closed, still, mouth red and slack, her hair strewn about her. She's devastation, ruin, the result of his work. He licks his lips, and his eyes close as he swallows the last taste of her down, a tang like oranges.

Utsumi's voice is slow, sleepy, satiated, and Yukawa opens his eyes to see her turned to the side, her arms together, but her fingers open and still. She asks, "What will you write this time?"

He removes the gloves he was wearing; they are soiled now, no longer useful for the task at hand. He flexes his fingers at the sensation of air, cool around them.

"Whatever you want," he answers, and places the used gloves into the container set aside for them, beside the rest of the supplies he'll need. Alcohol, gauze, razor blades wrapped in paper, ointment, all still in their packaging, waiting, lined in order of use, nothing lacking. He no longer smiles, not when even this simple thing he's planning to do requires such safety precautions. He puts on another pair of gloves.

He folds the paper around a razor back away from it; the crackle is loud, hair-raising. He lifts the blade out to examine the edge.

"What were you writing on the board, earlier today?"

"The Schrödinger equation." He puts a hand on her side and she uncurls herself, lying flat again. He presses a finger to her thigh -- a warning, the first of six -- this one for the freeze of the swab of an alcohol pad. She hums as he does it, momentary, low, her head arched back, the curve of her neck taut. He takes a moment to sterilize the blade itself, and then presses again.

"That's--" she sighs, as he makes the first cut, a perfect horizontal line, shallow and short, no more than two centimeters, on her thigh, "good." She's still communicative, but the words are so banal that it's possible that won't last for long.

He presses again, and makes another cut, parallel to the first, just as the first begins to dot with red beads, gleaming wet and shocking in their intensity of color. Utsumi sighs again, body tense, and quivering, but not flinching, even as he warns a fourth time, for another line. Her hands are fists, clenched tight and still. The need is the same as the want, overriding reservations. She's his, not in grasping, but in abandon, because his control is her control.

"Last one," he says, and watches the blood under her skin stain the white left behind by the push of his fingertip, even as he makes another delicate slice into her flesh, even as it pushes more of her blood out of the openings he's made. The razor he places within the disposal container.

There's not enough yet, even so, so he presses hard around the cuts and Utsumi moans, high, thready, and he glances at her face. She's there, in front of him, but her mind is somewhere else, gone into a haze, free in ecstasy, eyes closed and head turned almost into the bed. He traces the first line, and writes, starting at her collarbone, down in vertical formation for the sake of being neat. The beginning is 'i' for the imaginary unit (the theory, the start). The ending is psi (the wave function, ongoing process). A system ever changing. As he uses it all, the red on her skin dries, rapid, staining. It is not as dark as the mottled marks already on her shoulders; the blood there is under the surface, hot and broken.

He touches beside the cuts again, though whether she's aware of it is hard to tell, and wipes the cuts with another pad of alcohol, dries them with gauze and applies ointment to prevent scarring, though it is too late for the other thin white lines that remain. Even though they are no more deeper than a paper cut he places an adhesive bandage over them all. The writing he leaves alone. She'll see it, as she wanted, when next she wakes. She murmurs something -- it could have been a 'thank you' but it's too low to be sure -- and rolls to her side. He removes the gloves, and closes his eyes this time at the feeling of air, sighing, letting tension flow out. He disposes of that set of gloves too, leaves the supplies to be taken care of later. Utsumi will get cold, so he gathers the corners of the pushed-aside covers, and settles them around her shoulders, his fingers skimming over the marks on her skin that will remain longer than his other handiwork. 

He sits on the edge of the bed and looks across to her, sleeping in peace. She's worn out and he's still very much awake. He bends his head and turns away, and when he raises his head, his gaze focuses on two glasses of water on the bedstand. One for her, for when she needs it. He takes the other one up and drains as much of it as he can. He contemplates waking Utsumi, then dismisses it.

He lies beside her so that he can see her face, and puts his hand in her hair, under her ear, next to the fire of her scalp. Her eyelids flutter, but fail to open. She sleeps and although at any other time sleep would come to him with difficulty, it is not too far off this time.

He watches her, the rise and fall of her, as she breathes. Their breathing does not synchronize, but it doesn't matter. His blood thrums beneath his skin, endorphins spinning through, arousal and anxiety sloughing off. He could touch himself now, and she wouldn't know. He could stop denying the pleasure that turned to pain, but she hadn't allowed for it, and he was already past the need. He takes his hand from the comfort of her hair and touches her lips.

"Your control is unrelenting," he says, not because she will hear him, but because he has to say it, wants her to know it even if she doesn't. He puts his hand on her hip, but doesn't move her, instead drawing closer to her himself, until their bodies are touching. It is only then that he feels at rest; it is only then that his breathing slows.

* * *

"It's not a knife," Yukawa says. Utsumi doesn't look up, but she nods -- his warning received -- and keeps stroking the pine needles she'd picked up across her hand. They are stiff and brown, sharp and fragile at their points. If she wanted to, she could bend them until they snap, keep at it until she'd have nothing left but a pile of useless fragments.

Instead she traces the lines on her palm, light enough to almost be ticklish. Across the base of her thumb is a different line, white and thin, almost undetectable, especially in the shade under this tree. It's an evergreen so old that she and Yukawa are hidden, unless a casual observer were to look closer under the large sweeping branches that almost touch the ground around them.

Yukawa closes the book he was reading, sets it aside and leans over, his shoulder bumping into hers, an arm slung over a gathered-up knee, and the other locked stiff, between them. He's not looking at her; she can feel his attention drawn instead to her actions.

Across the lines beneath her fingers, back and forth, she scrapes the tips of the needles, redraws all the little wrinkles that don't mean a thing, faint stars folded in her skin. She says, "I was just remembering, how much this used to be everything I wanted. It was so unfair to you." She stops, pulls the needles apart from their joint, like bones.

"Was it?" Utsumi glances up as Yukawa reaches over, takes a needle from her hand and shifts closer. "You avoided this."

Across the scar, the tip of the pine needle scratches, her hand still lax in the bed of her lap. Her fingertips twitch, curving in. "I'm ashamed of it," she says.

"What about the others?" He moves on from the scar, scrapes up the side of her wrist; only after a few moments does she notice that he's following lines of her veins. There are no scars there, but she doesn't have to think hard to know what he means. As he moves the thin needle, she gets lost in the sensation of it, lets him slip his other hand under hers, the contact of it warm and dry and comforting. What was idle contemplation in her hands is something more focused in his, and more mesmerizing than what she could do to herself. Not all her scars are self-inflicted, not all are even visible. The needle moves, and he's so close to her she can see the individuality of his eyelashes.

"You took such good care of me I can't see them."

He says, "Not all of them. It has been a long time since you've required that of me." Those eyelashes sweep up, his gaze benign, and she moves her hand up from his, the scrape of the pine needle still tingling on her skin, from the tender mercy of a mimicry of past action. She moves up to touch his mouth with her fingertips, with the same lightness of touch as she gave herself, and she can't see if he closes his eyes because hers shut for the space of her lungs dragging air in, clean and simple.

"If I needed it I would tell you." She moves her hand away and bends her head to look down to it, curled into the dirt between them, whatever grass that might have been there killed a long time ago from lack of sun. "But I don't. I don't. It's in the past. I'd like it to stay there."

"This is not a knife," he repeats, "but you still remember how it feels, don't you?"

"Too well."

"As do I." He covers her hand with his, moves in closer, and when he speaks, his lips caress her cheek. He should care more about who might be watching, but she doubts that's even crossed his mind, and she can't bring herself to care either. Where his lips touch, heat spreads, equal parts comfort and arousal, every caress felt with more awareness than is normal. "It wasn't what you should have needed and it was never what I wanted, but we shouldn't ignore it."

"I'm not."

"I didn't expect you to. It's part of you, now." He moves back, and she fights against wanting to follow him, wanting to be close enough to feel him breathing. He seems so ignorant of this, as he turns her hand over to follow her scar, with his finger. She could protest that what he's doing to her is unfair, when this conversation carries such import.

"I can't forgive myself for that," she says, even as every coherent thought is slowly being demolished with the touch of his fingertips, the way she feels the slight dry roughness of the pads of his finger there on the palm of her hand, but how her sensitized skin reacts as though he'd placed his hand on the nape of her neck. She shivers.

"How many times have I forgiven you?"

"Too many."

He smiles, full of some unspoken intent, but before she can put herself on guard against whatever impulsive idea he's entertaining, he scratches his fingernail into the center of her palm. She gasps and then she's tasting the heat and smoothness of his mouth, his desiring of her ever a surprise.

She chases after him a little when he backs away, wanting to breathe in his skin more, and only opens her eyes when he speaks, his voice serious. "Try me again," he says. "I can take it."


End file.
